George F. Will Descent into Self-Parody

It appears that George F. Will has finally become a parody of himself. The ethically challenged millionaire pundit has got his bow tie in a bunch in a navel-gazing column which frets that conservatism may have been “rendered incoherent.” This, he whines, is “the summer of conservatives’ discontent” (of course no Will column would be complete without a quote or paraphrase from his well-thumbed Bartlett’s).

It doesn’t seem to matter that so-called “conservatives” now control all three branches of government, neartly every major corporation, the lion’s share of the mass media, and the proprietary software for the nation’s touch-screen voting systems. “Disconcerting” things have happened of late; presumably Will won’t be satisfied until the last liberal has crossed the Canadian border.

Are you ready for this? It seems that the current administration has been insufficiently faithful to the bedrock principle of “marginalizing the UN” (Of course, Will knows what he’s talking about when it comes to being insufficiently faithful). I’m sure both he and you would be hard-pressed to come up with another American politician who’s done more to marginalize the UN, but some people are never satisfied.

The problem is that in their ongoing efforts to keep all their lies and cover stories straight, the White House has had to back off a few furlongs from their assertions that the dilapidated Iraqi regime had a dagger at our throat. But that leaves them uncomfortably “close to asserting” that we went to war simply to enforce UN resolutions. Will doesn’t explain why anybody should believe a single thing the White House says any more about their various policy rationales, but he sure is disconcerted.

Of course, the fact that our armed forces are now so dangerously overextended and bogged down that the Crawford Cowboy may have to go crawling back to the UN chewing on barbecued crow may also serve to demarginalize the institution somewhat.

Will also claims, against all common sense, that the Usurper-in-Chief is actually interested in expanding the Medicare entitlement, rather than destroying it. Will appears disappointed that the White House has backed off the attempt to strangle Medicare immediately and must content themselves with starving the program until it can be, in Grover Norquist’s memorable phrase, drowned in the bathtub .

But these sorrows are as nothing compared to the fact that the Supreme Court still does not consist of nine clones of Antonin Scalia. Lamentably, the Court has now prevented Americans from passing “laws intended to strengthen a majority’s moral principles” – that is, laws empowering police to arrest lovers in their bedrooms.

Never mind that this same court has stood by whistling while the First, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, Fourteenth and Sixteenth amendments have been eviscerated. Never mind that the Court has used judicial activism of the most breathtaking sweep to read into the Eleventh amendment their own right to nullify any Congressional regulation of commerce. Never mind that the Court did “conservatives” the service of halting the lawful counting of votes so that their well-funded spokesman might assume the trappings of state.

Doggone it, if you can’t win every single time, what fun is it to control all three branches?

MARK ZEPEZAUER is an author and cartoonist based in Tucson, Arizona. His most recent book is Boomerang! How Our Covert Wars Have Created Enemies Across The Middle East And Brought Terror To America, from Common Courage Press.